Director: Marzieh Makhmalbaf
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 3.0
Three stories of life as a female in Iran: the first tale is of a 9-year-old girl who is told she's becoming a woman at noon, giving her about an hour to enjoy childlike innocence, the second (and most redundant) of a married woman defying her husband and culture by riding a bicycle (and trying to outrun them and failing) and the third about an older woman who buys countless appliances but has no place to put them. In essence, they're three stories about rebellion: the little girl rejects the chador her family tries putting on her, the young woman defies male authority and their nonsense laws and the older woman acts as an independent, self-supporting agent, buying things not out of necessity but out of desire and living carefree because … well, she can. What's so notable is how wonderfully minimalist it is - in language, in structure - and how much it achieves with so little - some have called the approach 'Felliniesque,' but the nonprofessional acting and filmmaking style remind me of another Italian: Pasolini. Though progressive and clearly feminist, director Makhmalbaf (née Meshkini) suggests the only freedom from oppression is death, symbolized by the old woman cast into the ocean.
